


Evolution

by Brennah_K



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Forced Gender-change, Gender Dysphoria, Obsession, mutiliation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 18:23:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7398520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennah_K/pseuds/Brennah_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of 'Sex, Birth, and Death', Spencer Reid wonders whether - if by saving Nathan Harris- he was putting others at risk in the future.</p><p>He was right to worry. By following up on his concerns about Nathan and saving him at the end of the case, Reid inadvertently redirects the focus of Nathan's obsession to himself... and Nathan, now five years older and a legal adult, is being released - having convinced his mother and doctors that he's sincerely recovered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good Deeds

"Who we are... is constantly evolving: I'm a lot older than you, and I'm changing all of the time. You know this job changes me; you've changed me. You sought me out to try to understand how not to harm people. That's a far more important part of who you are than the one that scares you."

Nathan smiled into the mirror, carefully straightening his tie, genuinely happy as he remembered Dr. Reid's words. 

Without those words, Nathan would have been moved from his in the juvenile wing of St. Mary's to the adult ward, instead of being released after the hearing to decide his disposition as of his coming 21st birthday.

Dr. Reid's advice had been useful in more than one way. While the doctor had visited occasionally, he hadn't visited often enough for the doctors to recognize the quotes that Nathan peppered his responses with during their counseling sessions; which, in the end, had been enough to convince them of his recovery from his "previous psychopathy and anti-social obsessions". It didn't hurt that he could honestly say that he was no longer fixated on whores and dead bodies. 

Dr. Reid's words had inspired him, helping him in so many ways. Giving him something to focus on when other fantasies beckoned. Dr. Reid was right: the fact that he had sought the man out to understand what had been going on in his thoughts and fantasies - had been far more important than the transitory urges that had scared him. He hadn't understood at first, but as time passed and he earned enough of the doctors' trust to gain access to the hospital's library, he began reading and came to understand evolution.

"Nathan, are you ready, Sweetie?" His mother asked as she stepped up behind him. 

"Ready to go!" He agreed, glancing at her reflection in the mirror before adjusting his glasses. 

When he turned, she reached up to tuck his bangs over his ear with a slight frown, asking, "Are you sure I can't talk you into a hair cut?"

"Mo-om," he protested drawing out the word the way he knew she liked, sounding like the 'normal teen' he knew she wished he was. 

"Okay, okay. I'll lay off the haircut talk if you'll let me take you shopping."

"Sure mom," he agreed easily. From the moment the review board gave its decision, Nathan had been building a detailed shopping list. Now was as good of a time as any to start collecting the items he would need. 

Behind his mother, one of the nurses stood, waiting with the envelope of personal items that they had been 'holding for him' since the day his mother he was transferred from the ICU to one of the ward's 'recovery' rooms. After signing the paperwork, she had ready for him, retrieving the package, and checking to be certain that Dr. Reid's card was still in his wallet, Nathan took his mother's hand and left the hospital.


	2. His Mother's Care

An hour later, Nathan was sighing as his mother tried for the fourth time to argue him out of his choice as he tried to put another of the items from his shopping list into their shopping cart.

"Mom, please?"

"Nathan, we already have sheets, and better than these cotton ones."

"I know, but these are what I've gotten used to, and I'd really feel more comfortable if I can use them- at least until I settle in. "

"But do you really need twelve sets?"

"Mom, please? I promise if it's a problem, I'll pay you back when I get a job."

"You know it's not, Nathan, I just worry that you're trying to turn your bedroom into a hospital room when you don't need to. I know they didn't let you make any choices there and you had to use the linens they told you, and wear what they told you but you're not there anymore." She argued, bringing up one of the other choices from his list that she hadn't been happy with him purchasing - seven sweaters that she claimed looked more like they were made for 'Mr. Rogers' than a 21-year-old boy.

Snapping at the ridiculous little wristband that he'd been given to supposedly distract him from feeling undue stress, Nathan let out what he hoped would sound like a forced sigh as he watched her eyes zero in on the bracelet with concern. He glanced away when she started to lift her head and suppressed a jolt of satisfaction when she quickly backtracked on her protest.

From that point on, the shopping trip went as smoothly as he could have hoped, and he left the store with every item on his planned shopping list as well as a few more: twelve sets of white cotton sheets and pillow cases,twelve white cotton waist towels, seven white terry cloth robes, white terry cloth slippers, fourteen long-sleeved cotton business shirts, fourteen ties, seven pairs of khakis, seven pairs of navy blue slacks, seven boy-scout type canvas belts in khaki with a mechanical flip-buckle, seven in blue, a month's supply of meal replacement drinks, large zippered storage bags, twelve canisters of bleach wipes, hair color, and sundry other supplies. There were still other supplies he would need, but that would have to wait until his mother had relaxed enough to let him visit her at the medical school.

Thirteen months after being released from St. Mary's, Nathan was able to get a job with one of his mother's former students who'd gone into veterinary medicine instead of nursing.

His mother had, of course, been disappointed that he wasn't aiming higher, but Nathan hadn't needed to belabor the point that his former institutionalization ruled that out. There was almost no chance that he would be able to get his foot in the door for any of the positions she would have liked him to aim at.

Frankly, Nathan couldn't have been happier; as the position would give him the access to the last few remaining supplies he would need: a stock of Lactated Ringer's Solution, absorbable polyglycolic sutures, and ketamine.


	3. Double Vision

Spencer Reid rarely experienced dreams. Personally, he theorized that this was a result of his intelligence, with his conscious mind having the capacity and maturity to easily address in the background what the subconscious mind in those of average intelligence normally focused on. Still, given the case they had just come off of, perhaps it was to be expected. 

The team had barely finished wrapping up the paperwork from the previous case, a string of kidnappings and tortures of patients from an assisted living community by a former employee, who by happenstance had been hospitalized for close to half of the first week, giving the team little to go on until after he had recovered sufficiently from his flu to pick up another victim... when the Director announced that the team had been specifically called in to work on a missing person's case where a Governor's grandchild had gone missing. In the end, it had turned out to be a false alarm, the grandchild and her boyfriend eloping out of state, but one of the governor's aids, anticipating that he was going to be fired in the near future, had tried to exploit the situation - covering up the fact that the two had tried to contact the man and let him know they were alright - long enough to arrange for a false ransom drop. The aide would have probably gotten away with it if Penelope hadn't recognized the boyfriend's cousin's name in searches of local car rentals. Contacting them through the Onboard radio system, Penelope had quickly gotten them in contact with the team in time for the police close in on the aide when he finally tried to retrieve the money drop. 

The fruitless searching, up to that point; lack of evidence fueling speculation about the other potential countermeasures that might have been taken by the nonexistent unsub; and the certainty of all of the family and friends that she and her boyfriend had been too well-behaved to just disappear... in addition to the nonstop political strong-arming had the team going almost six days straight before the discovery of the aide's manipulations. 

So now, after he'd been forced to keep his thoughts on work and only work for such an extended period, it seemed only natural that the combination of physical exhaustion and delayed purposelessness would combine to force his subconscious into action. Still, as surreal as it might be, watching himself walking around the room reshelving books that he had intentionally taken down for the next week of reading then moving on to straighten the rest of the room that he had barely taken notice of when he'd passed through it to get a glass of ice water before going to sleep. Odder still, was watching his mirror image sit on the edge of the bed, help him sit up, and urge him to finish drinking the last of his glass. 

He hadn't eaten or drunk much in the previous days, so perhaps this was simply a matter of his mind recognizing his dehydration and the need for increased water intake, but some small aspect of his subconscious tried to argue the point - focusing on the fact that if this were the case, Spencer shouldn't have a sensation of solidly feeling the fingertips that closed on his chin and held it steady as the glass was pressed to his lips. 

Foggy realization slowly rose in his mind as he felt himself pulled back down, by his feet, until he was laying flat on the bed, and the other him that didn't look as much like him as he had first seemed to, folded Spencer's arms over his chest before pulling the side of the blanket that hung down toward the floor up and over him covering his face. The world felt as if it was tilting on its sides as hands slid under the blanket and his back, then lifted.


	4. Disorientation

This wasn't right.

He wasn't dreaming, but with this realization came the knowledge that caused his breath to stutter in his chest: when he tried to lift his arms to stop the roll and push out with his knees... nothing was happening. He was aware of them, could feel that he didn't seem to be injured or bleeding out, but that was it.

Something was blocking his conscious control of his arms and legs. He his mouth, head, torso... nothing. He couldn't move, except in the continuous roll across the bed that was wrapping his blankets around him, obscuring him. Just before he estimated that he should be falling off the bed, he felt a hard surface come up under his stomach and hips, and the rest of his blanketed form folded over each edge, forced down by the weight of the blanket, and something else holding him in place as the surface pulled away from the bed. 

It took far longer than it should have to understand that he was on some sort of cart being rolled out of the room, and it only drew his what little of his attention there was that he could focus on the fact that his mind wasn't working right. His time sense seemed to be disjointed, and the almost constant access to facts that he was so accustomed to seemed erratic and strangely unrelated to everything from the average number of cells there were in stamen of the common red hibiscus to statistically preferred mass of commercial toothpaste brands crossing his mind, coming to mind instead of potentially useful facts and details about what had caused both his paralysis and mental state. What was more frustrating was a niggling suspicion that he should and did know, or would if he could just get his mind to operate properly, what exactly had been used to incapacitate him. 

Instead, though, he found himself hanging dizzily over a rack or table of some sort as it was bumped down the short flight of stairs between his apartment and the garage, which was odd he thought, as he almost never drove his mother's car, preferring to use his own bike or the train. A curiously practical thought informed him that his preference would not naturally be the same preference as someone who was attempting to remove him from his building without notice... before his mind slipped off into the contemplation of the phonetic qualities that made paralysis and analysis rhyming words. 

Time jumped again, or at least he thought it did, because although he couldn't remember how he had gotten there, Spencer was laying on his side in a dark, tight space that vibrated around him and rocked him with infrequent pitches and jerks. 

Testing his ability to move, Spencer was immediately disappointed as much by the fact that he'd had to struggle with his thoughts to stop counting backwards (in Greek) from 1000 - just to try to concentrate on moving. Before he could marshall a second productive thought, a different sort of darkness fell that didn't quite feel like another time jump but could have been either from its root cause or caused by the decreased breathing space afforded by the blanket. 

When Spencer next came to, there was no thought of pausing to assess his mental state or even of trying to move, though he would have very much wanted to, instead his ability to think in any shape or form was completely derailed by agony. In that first conscious moment, there was too much to pain to even locate its source. Not crying-out with it was impossible, but while the cry itself didn't stop the pain, it did draw a response that helped to locate its source. 

"You've woken too early, Dr. Reid." A somewhat familiar voice commented in a lightly scolding tone.


	5. To Nullify

"You've woken too early, Dr. Reid." A somewhat familiar voice commented in a lightly scolding tone. 

While Spencer couldn't lift his head to check, the voice sounded as if it was coming from a very few feet away, in the direction of his feet, but too close for that: two to three feet too close. The voice was coming from roughly the area of his groin, as was the pain. That recognition seemed to be what it took for the rest of Spencer's body to chime in informing him that he had been secured at his throat, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles by some sort of fabric straps. His wrists were secured beside his throat so that he couldn't lower his hands to protect the area that had been exposed by his knees being secured shoulder width or more apart. 

"W-h..." Spencer struggled to get the question out but failed as he felt a sharp edge cutting deeply into the sensitive flesh and choked on a pained cry instead. 

"It would really better if you hold as still as possible and keep as quiet as possible so that I can concentrate. Nullification is considered a somewhat delicate operation, and I haven't performed it before, at least not on a person."

'Nullification' - Spencer's thoughts whited out as he heard the word, even if he hadn't recognized it, a slick-liquid slap of flesh hitting a metal dish made its meaning all too clear.


	6. At Whim

"I thought I understood," Nathan murmured softly to the sleeping Doctor, having released the man from the canvas belts he had used as restraints. 

He had kept Dr. Reid medically sedated for the better part of two weeks until he was certain that his many precautions to avoid infections, discovery, and other interruptions to the doctor's recovery had been successful. Despite his mother's heated protests and warning that he was risking the doctor's health, it was clear that his precautions had worked. The incision was healing well, so much that his mother begrudgingly agreed that the area might even heal without any scarring; the sutures were absorbing naturally; and Dr. Reid hadn't suffered any noticeable signs of infections outside of a fleeting low-grade fever that his mother acknowledged could have come simply from the Dr's body reacting to the changes made during the surgery. The fever in itself hadn't lasted beyond the first introduction of lactated ringers introduced to make up for the blood and fluids lost during the operation. 

Even though his mother had only agreed to care for the doctor after the surgery had gone too far for her or any other doctor to reverse and Nathan had convinced her of his refusal to remove Dr. Reid to a hospital, his mother had been very diligent in providing Dr. Reid the best care she could give, staying constantly by his bedside without complaint. 

Not that he'd given her much choice. After monitoring her while she called out from the medical school and hospital, claiming a severe stomach flu, Nathan had released her from the chair by the doctor's bed, where he'd tied her so she could be close enough to 'consult' with if complications arose. Using the paracord he'd bought to bundle the blanket he'd brought Dr. Reid home in, he had tied her to the bed, giving her only enough length to walk around the bed and tend the healing surgical wounds that Nathan had inflicted.

"Understood what?" His mother questioned with clear reluctance. She had barely spoken to him over the past week, watching him warily and moving out of his way quickly whenever he stepped near. He didn't mind, really. It didn't even hurt his feelings; she'd never really paid him attention enough to understand him before, and if she was finally paying attention, well, perhaps it would help motivate her to do what he wanted her to do. 

"Dr. Reid said something to me, just before you committed me, about how everyone changed and evolved, that he'd evolved, that the job had changed him, that I had changed him. I thought I had understood what he meant, but I'm beginning to think that I misinterpreted his meaning."

That's all he said for several moments before pulling the filet knife he'd brought with him from the kitchen out of his pocket. It wasn't a surprise when she backed away from him quickly, almost panting with fear as she reached the end of her polycord leash. He ignored her reaction, though, following her until she couldn't back up any further then bending over to cut each ankle tie. 

"You should probably go take a shower," he ordered. "and get an hour or two of sleep. You've only slept a couple of hours a night in the chair. He's healing up well, so it can't hurt to be away for a couple of hours break." 

He never took his eyes off the unconscious man as he spoke. 

"What are you going to do?" Her voice quavered and broke as she asked the question. 

"Whatever I want." His tone might have sounded callous, but he was hardly concerned about that, having decided to change his plans for them both.


	7. Recovery

Originally, Nathan had planned that he and his mother would care for Dr. Reid throughout the entirety of the doctor's recovery, or at least until the doctor had healed enough that reverting his surgery would be an unlikely consideration for the doctor, especially after he had a chance to explain himself. 

That plan had changed by the third day. 

During the first two days, whenever Nathan had examined the doctor, he'd felt a surge of pride that he had helped the doctor evolve even further - freeing the man of his biological ties to stimulation, arousal, and urges that Nathan had many times wished that he, himself, could be freed from. He'd imagined the doctor's reaction to the change many times over the first days, but by the third day, he'd begun to realize that it was the times he imagined the doctor responding with horror or fear that his mind dwelt on the most. 

By the fifth day, Nathan had decided to keep Dr. Reid sedated for the doctor's own safety - uncertain if he could restrain himself if the doctor responded in either manner.

By the middle of the second week, he'd acknowledged to himself, though to himself alone, that his hope to change himself by helping the doctor change, was a weak and futile attempt based on a miss-understanding. Instead of becoming a catalyst to eliminate the disgusting urges that had plagued him for so long, the doctor was quickly becoming a focus of them. 

It was becoming more and more tempting to forestall his examinations of the doctor until the doctor was almost conscious, anticipating the doctor's reaction to Nathan's fingers probing the undoubtedly still-tender incision marks. Frequently, just as Dr. Reid seemed about to stir, Nathan would press his thumbnail into one of the redder points along the incision and watch the doctor squirm unconsciously trying to escape the touch. 

At other times, right after dosing the lactated ringer's bag with the ketamine dose to sink the nearly conscious doctor back into his medicated sleep, Nathan would press the heel of his hand into the slight dip where the doctor's scrota had been and push until the pain momentarily overruled the drug and woke Dr. Reid enough to force a groan from him. 

Temporarily satisfied, Nathan would let the drug run its course until temptation struck again.

It wasn't until the previous night, the twelfth since taking and operating on the doctor, that Nathan finally recognized the need to change his plans. 

During the night, he had dreamt of Dr. Reid, but not in the way that he had during the years of his hospitalization - where the waking doctor would understand and agree with his motivations, expressing his gratitude with a chaste kiss. 

Instead in his dream, after explaining himself to an agitated and frightened Dr. Reid, Nathan had immediately started a second surgery with the doctor conscious as he dissected and removed the nerve clusters from each nipple. Nathan had woken the next morning to soiled shorts and the realization that while there was still a chance for his plan to succeed, if he still wanted that, he would have to act immediately and decisively. 

After sending his mother off to her shower, Nathan slowly walked around the doctor's bed trailing the tip of the filet knife over the doctor, up his arm, across his shoulder, over his throat... back down to Dr. Reid's other shoulder, the inside of his elbow... the inside of his wrist.


End file.
